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Every year the most popular DACS general meetings are John Patrick's state-of-the-net presentation and Microsoft's briefing on their new software. When John last spoke to us, he presented a dazzling image of things to come: e-commerce, collaboration over the Web, and project participation completely independent of location. We soared with his vision and knew with certainty that it would all come about-someday. But John's presentation was made a long time ago, way back in December of 1998. Now, in March of 1999, Microsoft came to town and showed us that the tools for that future are here and now.

Our March general meeting was attended by 150 members and an equal number of visitors, some of whom signed in and others who just drifted it. It was testimony to the fact that a lot of people out there are tuned in to DACS. The subject was Microsoft's Office 2000, due out about June. Our presenter was Brett Davis from the Partner and Consumer Education Dept. of Microsoft's NY/NJ office. Brett is becoming a familiar face to DACS members. He was the speaker at our November meeting, where he showed us a number of Microsoft products including Money 99, Combat Flight Simulator, and others just right for Christmas presents. This time Brett presented us with an excellent preview of the eight applications in the Office 2000 suite. He demonstrated snippets of each, emphasizing how they play together. In the time he had, Brett had to stick primarily to the features of the apps. The implications of it all working together emerged as he spoke.

As good as Brett was, and as delightful as many of the new features are, the importance of the meeting was in showing how each of the components of Office 2000 contributes to transforming data and words into a brand new way of working with and presenting information to people.

What computers and communications media have added to the concept of information can be considered as new dimensions. Multimedia, Web search, Web distribution, network collaboration, computer algorithms, and other emerging electronically generated capabilities have become as fundamental to information as data and words. From that point of view, let's look at the components of Office 2000.

Word 2000 works along the traditional word dimension. It edits, formats, and structures documents. It has been expanded to handle HTML. It also is specifically designed to "round trip" (great new buzz word) information to the Web, where it can pick up comments and modifications from on-line collaborators and then pop right back into Word.

Excel 2000 works along the data structure dimension. Table data can be dragged from an Internet browser directly into a spreadsheet. A new feature, pivot tables, provides alternate views of data. It, also, can move data directly to and from a Web browser.

PowerPoint 2000 is Microsoft's app for preparing slide presentations. The 2000 version adds some new hoops, but most significantly creates a presentation dimension directly from the other components. The good old dog and pony show will never look the same.

Access 2000 is the functionality dimension. It is Web-centric in that it is now designed specifically to deliver Web pages from the databases it manages. It can be configured for either E-mail or the Web.

Publisher 2000 and FrontPage 2000 are the composite dimensions, Publisher for printed output and FrontPage for the Web. They are built to painlessly access a vast reservoir of design themes, templates, and clip art. Wizards help you customize to your specific intent.

Outlook 2000 is designed to cope with the deluge of E-mail by managing it. Outlook uses rules, key features, color coding, and other neat tricks. It handles HTML and XML so that E-mail can include anything you can see on a Web page. It also supports the V-card, which is a virtual business card and sure to become a darling of everyone. Outlook also is implemented to support meetings and contacts on the Web.

PhotoDraw 2000 is a very impressive program that the other components can call on for the visual effects dimension. The Draw and Place feature makes it seem like graphics capabilities are built in to every app.

Another major advance that will have a tremendous effect in time is the integration of multiple national languages into the programs. Gone is the day when a different version is constructed for each language. Using the 16-bit Unicode characters and extensive word recognition, there is just one international version of the program. The user selects the language for the user interface. Also, the program will recognize foreign words in its word-processing routines for spell correction. The long-term effects here will be a major simplification of processing data between countries and a building up of international interdependencies.

Office 2000 comes in four sizes. Standard includes only Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. Premium includes everything. Small Business and Professional are in between.

If all you want to do is to continue your word processing and spreadsheet maintenance, don't bother with any of them. Stay with what you have. If, however, John Patrick's visions are still in your head and you want to be a player, then you have to do the Full Monty and get the Professional package. You have to put yourself through the excruciating and humbling learning curve of all eight programs because you have to develop the mindset of working along all the dimensions. The way we do things has changed.

You don't really have to consider information as a multidimensioned entity. You can think of it as a dynamic object-oriented data structure, or even as a many-splendored thing, but you must look at it very differently than in the past. This is what Office 2000 is really all about.